I received this book for free for a Blog Tour in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Geli Voyante's Hot or Not by Elle FieldPublished by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform on 16th October 2013
Genres: Chicklit
Pages: 320
Format: eARC
Source: for a Blog Tour
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‘I think I will always be known as the Hot or Not girl, defined by it for the rest of my career. Even my tombstone will read: Angelica “Geli” Voyante, beloved trendsetter. Death? Not Hot.
Yet, it doesn’t sound right. Why won’t anyone realise that there is more to me than this fickle persona I have inadvertently become?’
Geli Voyante is bored of being the Hot or Not girl, even if it has the perk of sitting next to Theo, the newspaper’s very Hot political columnist. She’s also getting a little lonely being single.
When her arch-nemesis Tiggy Boodles gets engaged, and other loved ones start to settle down, it’s time for Geli to convince Theo that she’s not as shallow as her column suggests and, more importantly, she’s the one for him. Geli should remember though that there are always two sides to every story, and that applies to people too…
What a book. wow. I loved it. I got sucked into Geli’s world and I didn’t ever want to leave. So much happens in this book and the characters go through so much that it’s hard to remember how they started off.
I, like Geli, was swooning over Theo. He’s hot, I mean really hot. Also he’s clever. He gets that politics stuff, you have to be clever to get that. I have to say I found the Hilary Obama “marathon” discussion hilarious. It had me laughing for absolutely hours. However after their first “date” I had my suspicions about how perfect he really was. Further along in the novel I knew something was wrong and that he had serious issues.
I hated Tiggy. Every time it seemed like she was going to change, bam she was just pretending to get what she wanted. Personally I just think she was jealous of Geli.
Calvin. Oh Calvin. He is delicious! He is also a really good person. I mean he does charity work and no one forces him.
I loved Glinda. She was the perfect best friend. I did become frustrated with her need to keep returning to Jeeves when he clearly wasn’t good for her.
This book had a fantastic ending and I really really hope there is a sequel. I would love to see what Geli is doing a year or two down the line. I will definitely be reading Elle’s debut book Kept as soon as I can.
Excerpt
Computer loaded. Connect to Internet. Facebook. Log-in. Password: Toblerone. Let’s just have a little scroll down my News Feed.
“Claire Voyante is listed in a relationship with David Sinclair” – ooh! Claire has a new boyfriend. Bitch! He has no chance though because she’ll never marry someone called Sinclair to become “Claire Sinclair”. It’s stupider than Claire Voyante. There’s a mini-picture of the two of them. Looks kind of geeky – exactly her type then. Boring. I know they won’t last, so I don’t care… Much.
Scroll down some more.
“Glinda Rosenberg wrote on your wall. 9.13 a.m.”
Excellent! Glinda is my very best friend and no doubt has messaged me to arrange lunch, even though we live together and saw each at breakfast – the reason I was late for work… again. We easily lose track of time when we’re together and we always arrange our lunches over Facebook because it helps waste the morning away. I’m just about to click “view wall-to-wall” when something catches my eye and I frantically, and quite manically, scroll down. Run mouse, run!
Fuck.
It can’t be… it is: “Tiggy Boodles is engaged to Calvin Murphy-Lee.”
“Millicent ‘Lily’ Jackson is engaged to Jasper Jenkins.”
“Sarah Simmons is engaged to Toby Holton.”
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Three! Three in one day! This cannot be happening to me. Especially not Tiggy. Why, oh why, Tiggy? I didn’t even know she was seeing someone seriously.
Lately, I’ve noticed this a lot though. All my so-called friends are getting engaged, settling down, beginning the cosy coupledom of married life, until death (or divorce) do they part. Each time I see an announcement, a little part of me dies. Each time, I can’t refrain from thinking, but what about me?
Not that I actually think “what about me?” because what they are doing is just Not Hot. I should know, I declared it so. Everyone knows that grown-up life begins at twenty-five. Before that you are still a child. You wouldn’t let a three year old child get married; equally, you shouldn’t let a twenty-three year old child get married. These may be adult bodies we inhabit but on the inside we’re no better than toddlers. Until twenty-five, that is.
I mean, everyone agreed I was right to declare paying back student loans at above £15,000 earnings wasn’t Not Hot. Changing the requisite to over twenty-five gives the post-uni people time to sort their lives out and allows a greater chance at getting a foot on the housing ladder (house prices aren’t Hot either). It allows the opportunity to deal with silly credit card debt without the additional worry of student loan debt. This break would boost the overall economy and make a better Britain, or at least that’s what Jerry (real name Ben Anderson; Ben and Jerry) declared to me after he read that particular Saturday column-inclusion.
Jerry is the Economist columnist and whereas Theo is Hot, Jerry’s gay. We are beyond looks. But, at least he makes sense when he talks, doesn’t mind me calling him Jerry, and calls my column “inspired” – far more flattering than Theo’s grimace.
I suppose I can just about cope with Lily and Sarah’s engagements, but Tiggy… I cannot accept that she… she is getting married.
Tiggy Boodles is my arch-nemesis. She cannot be getting married for legitimate reasons because she is incapable of love. This is a spite campaign against me so she can declare in her pathetic rip-off column that I was wrong and weddings for the under twenty-fives are Hot. But, if she hadn’t got some poor schmuck to agree to marry her – and I bet she cajoled him into proposing – she wouldn’t be saying that. I bet this Calvin Murphy-Lee person did not drop to one knee or, if he did, it was only because Tiggy was gripping his arm tightly with her talon-grip and pushing him to the ground.
Tiggy Boodles is your classic airhead. She is blonde to my brunette; orange to my human-colour; a copy-cat to my creative – proved by her rip-off column: “Fab or Faux”. Sound familiar? Week-in, week-out, she declares my column as faux. She likes broken, low-quality records as you’ve probably gathered. It’s funny though as I’m the one with all the awards… and my own boobs. There’s nothing faux or unnatural about me… unlike the silicon in her.
In public however, it’s a different story. There are air-kisses for the silly cameras that inevitably seem to follow Tiggy Boodles around like the poop (not the scoop) she is. For the record, the air-five is the Hot way to greet friends and enemies alike. She schizophrenically acts like we’re best buddies because we both hail from the same hometown of Durban, South Africa, we both attended the same university here in the UK – Leeds – and we now both live in London, where we write a similar column, in the same publishing family. I quickly, and rather unnecessarily add, my column is far superior, but as we both work in the New News family and with New News being big on family values, bizarrely they encourage this deluded, juxtaposed rivalry in the spirit of sisterly banter. They think it’s great. Newspaper talk for: we sell copies.
To me though, despite what senior management may say, Tiggy Boodle is faux and I hate her. She is nothing but a parasite whose favourite activity is replicating my life to torture me. Go figure.
It’s wasn’t always like this. Once upon a time, back in Durban, we were best friends. Inseparable in and around The Berea, the neighbourhood where we both lived. Even though we were in different houses at school, we were still inseparable. Inseparable. Up until the point she stole my childhood sweetheart, Eric Nevis, in a move that divided the loyalties of our year group at Durban Girls’ College and then we were never found in the same vicinity again. Even though our worlds collided practically every day and we shared the same physical space, we were operating on different levels. That made it like we weren’t in the same place, even if she was standing two metres away or sharing a desk with me in class. The girls’ loyalties may have been divided, but the teachers didn’t care. Hence, the forced desk sharing.
Eric later cheated on her – he slept around, especially with the tourists frequenting the Golden Mile – and, to my great delight, gave her a nasty disease. It gets better. He then told everyone the real reason why he dumped her instead of covering it up with social niceties. Fantastic! Even if he had left me for Tiggy I instantly forgave him for that.
Every so often, I like to include STI’s in my column as Not Hot. It gives me great satisfaction to know I’m subtly, but publicly, making a dig at Tiggy. Better still, she knows it. It also wins me brownie points with the adults because I have a huge teen following and it promotes me as a modern day heroine for promoting safe sex. Ha! And it’s all thanks to Tiggy Boodles for being a cheating, phoney slut. It kills her to know that.
However, Tiggy Boodles may be a cheating, phoney slut, but she is a cheating, phoney slut who is now engaged. That smarts. More so than when she enticed Eric away from me using the lure of cheap sex. I cannot believe a girl of her dubious morals is getting married before I am to this Calvin person, whoever this deluded Calvin person is. Quasimodo’s uglier brother, perhaps?
Quick! Click on Calvin’s name. Excellent, his profile isn’t limited!
Oh dear… Oh dear, dear, dear… This is not good. This is not good at all.
Name: Calvin Murphy-Lee
Sex: Male
Interested in: Women
Relationship Status: Engaged to Tiggy Boodles
Birthday: 16th January, 1977
Hometown: Windsor, Berkshire
And, oh my, he’s Hot. Click, “view more photos”.
Crap. He is deliciously hot. Life is truly not fair. How is Tiggy Boodles, Tiggy Boodles of all people, engaged to a deliciously hot, thirty year old City boy who is probably worth millions by now and who, worst of all, looks í? Not just nice in the looks sense, but like a nice person.
He’s tagged in an album entitled “Christmas with Shelter”. Calvin has sacrificed his Christmas Day to help others out and, by the looks of it, not only is this a regular Christmas occurrence, it seems Mr Murphy-Lee helps out all year round. I suspect he doesn’t do this to impress people either. I can tell this because he isn’t posing in any of the photos in the “look at me, look at me” manner I equate with Tiggy. He looks oblivious in fact.
How on earth has the evilest, most selfish girl in both hemispheres managed to snag a gorgeous, rich, nice man? How has she done it? She hates the homeless. She hates charity work. I mean, I suspect she even hates her own mother (justifiable, I’ve met Ursula), so what on earth has he seen in her? If it is true, if she really has managed to capture this man’s heart – let me face the gutting truth for one moment here, she has uncharacteristically kept quiet about him which smacks that this is probably the real deal – then where is my Calvin Murphy-Lee? This makes no sense whatsoever.
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